Thanksgiving

There weren't many traditional hints here that a major American holiday was coming up. No frost or turning leaves, no cornucopia decorations. We only found one grocery store display, at the British grocery below our building:

It was heavy on jarred gravy and canned jellied cranberries. But no turkeys or stuffing!  Which is just as well because when I finally did find turkeys, a ten-pound one was selling for about 75 USD.  Which seemed a little high. And, while Jason and Eliza did go for a 5k run this morning, there was no festive turkey trot with cinnamon rolls at the finish line. No televised parade or American football game. And no extended family around.

So we decided on a slightly non-traditional Thanksgiving celebration this year.

Thursday is just another work/school day here, so there weren't many people out. But Jason took the day off and we took out a boat from the Emirates Palace Marina and boated over to a mostly empty island. We had to hike our picnic across the beach to a little shady spot.

After searching 8 grocery stores we finally found pumpkin and made a pie last night. Ben made triple layer jello. We whipped up some potato salad and grabbed a couple of rotisserie chickens from the deli and some fruit and veggies this morning and had a feast on the beach!

Then the kids hit the water, swimming, building sand castles and sand forts and sand people, beach combing all afternoon. Henry forgot his goggles and so improvised a diving bell with a clear plastic tub.  We saw some "dhabis" running across the sand. Jason took and nap and I read a magazine.

This was the most relaxing Thanksgiving ever.